The mighty engine of technological progress lurches forward. Hooray for the grape tomato! From Virginia Postrel:
Posted by DeLong at April 12, 2004 05:21 PM | TrackBack | | Other weblogs commenting on this postDynamist Blog: TOMATOES AND PROGRESS: If progress is so obvious, why do tomatoes taste so bad? For as long as I can remember, the contrast between delicious tomatoes out of the garden and the rubbery, tasteless variety in supermarkets was Exhibit A in the case against large-scale agriculture. In the early '90s, a biotech company tried to genetically engineer a good tomato. They attracted a lot of hostility from the likes of Jeremy Rifkin but ultimately failed in their quest.
Over the last couple of years, however, delicious tomatoes have hit the supermarkets--in miniature form. Where did these grape tomatoes come from? And could anything that tastes so good actually be low in calories? As I was wolfing some down like candy last night, I wondered about these questions and, using Google, found the story behind them, a long feature by Carole Sugarman of the WaPost. I suspect no one read it at the time (check the date) but it's well worth a read now. The story has all the elements of a contemporary business yarn--globalization, intellectual property disputes, secretive business deals--but no new-fangled biotech. It's all old-fashioned grafting, upsetting to Marvell's mower but no bit deal to today's bio-Luddites. Here are some excerpts:
In a few weeks, when most of the locally grown tomatoes disappear, there will still be hope for the brisk-weather salad. A juicy beefsteak may be hard to come by, a pint of farmers' market cherry tomatoes may be scarce, but commercially grown grape tomatoes -- the bite-size sugary fruit that has gone from novelty to commodity -- will be in abundance."Meteoric," is how Tom Mueller, director of sales and marketing for Six L's Packing Co., Inc., an Immokalee, Fla., grower, describes their rise in popularity.
After years of producing flavorless, armor-thick impostors, commercial tomato growers now have a big hit. Grape tomatoes are sold widely, from Wal-Mart to Sutton Place Gourmet. Aside from Florida, they're being grown in Mexico and up and down the East and West coasts, making them available all year long. Six L's, for example, farms grape tomatoes in Virginia in the summer, working its way down the coast to Florida by the end of October.
And their ubiquitousness has changed the landscape of the supermarket produce aisle.
Grapes "have killed the cherry tomato business," says Charles Lester, produce buyer for Giant Food, who added that the chain "very seldom" carries cherry tomatoes anymore. They're "quickly becoming the tomato of choice," says Craig Muckle, spokesman for Safeway, which sells 10 times more grape than cherry tomatoes....
Their success, however, is more than just a triumph of taste. The forces of the global marketplace have growers constantly scrambling to come up with the next great idea. New varieties of produce are being imported "from Holland, Costa Rica, all over the world," says Gene McAvoy, an extension agent with the University of Florida. "If growers don't stay ahead of the pack, they're in trouble. People don't just want a pepper anymore."
They also don't just want a tomato, which is why grape tomatoes hit such a competitive nerve among growers. It also explains how the efforts of a small Florida farmer developed into a legal battle, a seed crisis and eventually an oversupply of the tomatoes.
Andrew Chu, a vegetable grower in Wimauma, Fla., first heard about a grape-shaped variety of cherry tomato in 1996. A Taiwanese friend and specialty produce wholesaler in New York asked Chu to try them, thinking they might appeal to Asian shoppers; they were already being grown in mainland China.
So Chu sent away for the hybrid seeds from Known-You Seed Co., Ltd., in Taiwan. He planted his first crop in the fall of 1996. Asians bought the grape-shaped tomatoes, but the market was limited, says Chu.
"I started thinking about taking them mainstream," he says. So in 1997, Chu Farms packed them up in pint-size plastic clamshells, and shipped them through its regular distributors to the East Coast.
Word travels fast among the farmers, seed salespeople and truck drivers in tomato country. Before long commercial growers such as Six L's and Procacci Bros. got a taste of the fruit and realized Chu was on to something. "I've been in business 53 years and I recognized their potential," says Joe Procacci, chief executive officer of Procacci Bros., who first saw the sweet tomatoes at Chu's initial three-acre plot. He and other growers imported the seeds -- a variety called Santa -- and started planting.
As far as I can tell from online sources, grape tomatoes do in fact have few calories, about 33 in a half cup.
My reaction to my first trial was "WOW". But I had a not-so-good taste sensation with another purchase. I don't know how to judge the quality. But ... there good ones and not-so-good ones.
Posted by: don majors on April 12, 2004 06:05 PMExcuse me for not exalting in this piece of news. I'm supposed to be happy about an engineered tomato that tastes good and I can buy at Wal-Mart? Sorry to rant, but this is a hot-button issue with me. Brad, you really need to have a nice heart to heart with Alice Waters about vegetables and agriculture some day soon. After this and your seasonal vegetable past post, I am very disappointed.
Posted by: Chibi on April 12, 2004 06:16 PMHooray for the US discovering 'new' produce! As someone who only recently discovered the world's most perfect citrus fruit (the clementine), I'm all for increasing the variety of fruits & vegetables in the supermarkets.
I still hate tomatoes, though.
Posted by: cyclopatra on April 12, 2004 07:13 PMThe tomatoes (and produce in general) have been tasteless and not terribly nutritious since the 1960s. Check _Consumer Beware: Your food and what's been done to it_ by Beatrice Trum Hunter. I think it was published in 1970.
In my experience, a tasty tomato results from variety, good soil (cow poo, as long as it's from a clean-living cow, is my favorite soil amendment; compost is a good second), and ripening time. Remove any of the three, and an inferior tomato is the result.
Posted by: Batavicus on April 12, 2004 07:48 PMIt's so refreshing and nutritious for our minds to read the latest of anything by Virginia Postrel. Her permanent subtitle should be "Things Really ARE Great!"
Did she get in any explicit adoration of the free market in this piece, or was it all subtext? Any digs at regulations?
Now I'm a free marketeer and optimistic myself - but her rose-colored view is nauseating.
Posted by: Buford P. Stinkleberry on April 12, 2004 08:16 PMYes, cow poo from alcoholic, sexually promiscuous bisexual cows that smoke weed and dabble in heroin (the Lou-Reed-type-cow) leads to an excessively gamy tomato.
As I understand, the problem with store-bought tomatos is 1). they're picked before they're ripe, 2.) they're bred to be tough so handling doesn't damage them, and maybe 3.) they're forced, to get the highest pounds-per-acre or pounds-per-input of crop. So if we were willing to pay 2x or 3x (or more) the cost per pound, we could get the old juicy tasty tomatoes. Really, 1 and 2 both have to do with handling imperatives.
Sizing-down to cherry and then grape probably has to do with #2 -- smaller tomatoes can be juicier and less firm and still be stable with handling. I think that there's a simple geometrical explanation which I have forgotten -- increased diameter and increases weight faster than surface, I think, putting more pounds pressure per square inch of skin when the tomato moves.
Or maybe I'm wrong.
Posted by: Zizka on April 12, 2004 08:19 PMThere are no ripe local tomatoes yet. Wait until summer: then we will eat lots of ripe local tomatoes.
Posted by: Brad DeLong on April 12, 2004 10:13 PMI'm not sure why there is a hue and cry above in comments.
This is no engineered tomato. It is a HYBRID. The story is similar to the Dutch tulip mania and the latest geranium in your neighbor's yard.
Now, I'm not an industrial agriculture fan, but this story is not about that. It is about someone finding a tomato variety that actually has some flavor and marketing it. Finally.
Go eat some, fer criminy.
D
"increased diameter and increases weight faster than surface, I think, putting more pounds pressure per square inch of skin when the tomato moves.
Or maybe I'm wrong."
Actually, no, you're right. Volume, and therefore mass, is ∝ the cube of the diameter, while surface area is only ∝ diamter squared.
Posted by: Abiola Lapite on April 13, 2004 04:37 AMAh...I've got grape tomatoes growing in my yard right now.
The seeds were brought by a cousin from Cuba, where they have been grown for...I don't know, maybe 70 years (my dad's age, he remembers them as a kid).
If this is what I think it is (and I've never seen these "grape tomatoes", it's only a tomato in the sense that a potato is a tomato. A seperate member of the Solanacae, and it's real common name is Cape Gooseberry among others. Supposedly not a bad fruit, but it's been known for aaaaaaaaaages, and have been grown in backyard gardens, even in america, for almost as long.
One more thing, jeeeeez, I really was thinking you were talking about a tomacco, or something like that.
Posted by: shah8 on April 13, 2004 05:37 AMZizka wrote:
Yes, cow poo from alcoholic, sexually promiscuous bisexual cows that smoke weed and dabble in heroin (the Lou-Reed-type-cow) leads to an excessively gamy tomato.
Cute. Really though, if a cow has been fed hay that's been treated with herbicide (or grazed on a pasture that's been), such as Picloram or Grazon, the herbicide will pass through the cow. That manure will kill anything that's not a grass, even if it is composted first. As you can imagine, you can also find little dead patches where the cow has peed.
The tasteless produce problem might solve itself in a generation. All the producer has to do is wait for everyone who knows how tomotoes used to taste to die off. Or maybe not even that long. Food producers have been very good at educating our palettes to like food that's more easily mass produced.
Posted by: Batavicus on April 13, 2004 07:43 AMWhile tomatoes are not intrinsically poisonous, as I understand if you graft a tomato onto a nightshade root you can get a poisonous tomato. I don't know how that would taste, though, but you'd sort of hope that it would taste great, so that******, for example, would eat lots of them.
Posted by: Zizka on April 13, 2004 08:10 AMI love grape tomatoes--I discovered them maybe seven or eight years ago in a gourmet market in NYC, and I've been buying them ever since, generally to the exclusion of large tomatoes (except at the peak of the local season). The only thing they're not good for is sandwiches, since they're so small. I love them in cooking (recipes that call for chopped tomatoes, except ones where the tomatoes need to be peeled) since they have a nice, intense tomatoey taste. Sometimes I even let them shrivel on my window sill before using them, since that intensifies the flavor more. Sure, they're mass-produced, but they taste awfully good, and that's what I care about.
Posted by: mg on April 13, 2004 08:42 AMTry heirloom tomatoes. While they look like some kind of mutant plant from a science fiction movie, they are very good and extremely popular. They come out in late summer or early fall. Markets such as Whole Foods carry and them, and of course you pay extra. Tomatoes are a great food with the only downside being they aggravate acid reflux problems.
Posted by: A. Zarkov on April 13, 2004 09:46 AMBrad DeLong
This is not at all fair to older weaker eyes! Please enlarge!!!
Grrr.
Posted by: anne on April 13, 2004 10:16 AM"As someone who only recently discovered the world's most perfect citrus fruit (the clementine),"
Balls. Nothing beats a blood orange (staining is a pain in the butt, though).
Gotta say, I've tried grape tomatoes and found them inferior in taste to cherry tomatoes. And both greatly inferior to heirloom tomatoes.
"Actually, no, you're right. Volume, and therefore mass, is ∝ the cube of the diameter, while surface area is only ∝ diamter squared."
Yeah, but the bulk density packed will still be the same. I think the better handling is more a factor of packing in the small pint pots than of the cube-square law.
Posted by: Tom on April 13, 2004 11:06 AMThe only tasty small tomatoes off season are
the ones in the little red bags - Desert Glory
I think they are called. Ms Kestrel, as usual,
is trying to create style.
Ok, fine it's a hybrid. And really, it's not the variety I have a problem with. It's the idea that if we grow this variety in Chile in a big monoculture tomato farm, fly them to California so that we can get tasty tomatoes 12 months out of the year is a TERRIBLE idea of progress. How many calories were spent to fertilize, pesticize, pick, pack, ship, and sell to get that 33 calories per half cup of fruit to your mouth? I'll bet it was far more than 33. Someday the arithmetic will catch up to us. This is progress? Now take locally grown, in-season tomatoes bought at your farmers market, or better yet, grown in your back yard. Far more efficient.
Posted by: Chibi on April 13, 2004 12:34 PM"The only thing they're not good for is sandwiches, since they're so small."
works fine for me! you just have to squish 'em in there :D
necessity really is the mother of invention...
Posted by: gogol13 on April 13, 2004 04:01 PMYeah, those rubbery tasteless tomatoes are a pet peeve of mine too. In the last 10 years I've noticed some progress on the juiciness front especially with the hothouse on the vine varieties, but they still don't taste any damn good. A bit of lemon juice along with some salt and pepper can salvage them to within a shadow of a memory of a good tomato, though.
Posted by: stretch on April 13, 2004 04:31 PMChibi - I agree with you; I mentioned I didn't like industrial agriculture.
I must say, however, that this would be a good product for local markets.
D
Posted by: Dano on April 13, 2004 10:43 PMOnline Casino Directory
Posted by: Online Casinos on June 23, 2004 02:18 AM